Decision support system based on BWM for Analyzing success factors affecting the quality in the Iraqi construction projects

Creating a balance between cost, time, and quality in construction projects is always expected. It is possible to have a project with excellent quality and minimal cost, but at the expense of time, or vice versa. The goal of this paper is to discover, evaluate and prioritize the factors that most influence the desired construction projects' level of quality (success factors) in Iraq. Over a comprehensive review of literature, 11 potential quality-related factors were found to fall into the following five categories: client, contractor, design, materials, and project related factors. These factors' significance was determined using fuzzy Best Worst Method (BWM). Result shows the most three significant success factors influencing quality in the construction projects were related to contractor, client, and designer. These factors were financial competence of contractor, technical capability of client, and designer suitable selection with weights (30.84%, 15.58%, and 10.05%) respectively. These results conclude that maximization of the success factors will guarantee that the building sector achieves its quality objectives

Isolation and Characterization of the Endophytic N2 – Fixing Bacterium, Acetobacter Diazotrophicus aAssociated with Sugarcane Plants

Acetobacter  diazotrophicus is an obligate endophytic N2- fixing bacterium mainly associated with sugarcane and other sugar-rich plants that are propagated vegetatively (Kirchhof et al., 1998). This bacterium does not survive in soil or in weeds found in cane fields (Dobereiner, 1995) ). The presence of this endophyte within the tissues of sugarcane plants no doubt supplements the N-nutrition of the crop. This plants, preliminary work, thus attempts, for the first time, to isolate and characterize endophytes within the tissues of sugarcane plants grown in Kenana Sugar Company

Design and implementation of proposed 320 bit RC6-cascaded encryption/decryption cores on altera FPGA

This paper attempts to build up a simple, strong and secure cryptographic algorithm. The result of such an attempt is “RC6-Cascade” which is 320-bits RC6 like block cipher. The key can be any length up to 256 bytes. It is a secret-key block cipher with precise characteristics of RC6 algorithm using another overall structure design. In RC6-Cascade, cascading of F-functions will be used instead of rounds. Moreover, the paper investigates a hardware design to efficiently implement the proposed RC6-Cascade block cipher core on field programmable gate array (FPGA). An efficient compact iterative architecture will be designed for the F-function of the above algorithm. The goal is to design a more secure algorithm and present a very fast encryption core for low cost and small size applications

Management of myelomeningocele

Objective: T To find out best possible protocol to provide productive life to children born with myelomeningocele.Study design: Descriptive study.Place & Duration of study: Department of Neurosurgery, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre Karachi from December 2001 to December 2006.Patients and Methods: The medical record of 415 children with myelomeningocele operated at our center was reviewed retrospectively. The surgical & medical management protocol used for different sites of myelomeningocele was studied.Results: The age of most of the patients at the time of myelomeningocele repair was between 25-30 days; however, children with ruptured myelomeningocele were consistently repaired early. All paraplegic patients with dorsolumbar myelomeningocele were treated with either a low-pressure ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt only, direct repair or both. Patients with cervical, dorsal and lumbo-sacral myelomeningocele requiring VP shunt were operated either simultaneously for both procedures or with delayed insertions of a VP shunt after treatment of ventriculitis All 16 patients with ruptured myelomeningocele (3.8%) were treated for repair as well as ventriculitis. Complications including CSF leak, wound infection or necrosis after repair of myelomeningocele occurred in 22 cases (5.3%). The postoperative follow up for all patients was 1- 2 years.Conclusions: Surgical intervention with a low-pressure VP shunt in large dorsolumbar myelomeningocele produced good results

Utilizing geographic information systems in pavement maintenance applications: Baghdad university as case study

management of the paved network system is a critical issue that always has been the main focus not just in this university, but also to other educational institutions and organizations At the University of Baghdad. These extensive networks are crucial systems at the university as it does not just include the roads, parking spaces, pedestrians' lanes, and sidewalks around the university campus, but also is also extended to a large-scale area, including the bus stations and terminals. This research is conducted in order to set up a smooth and reliable Pavement Maintenance Management System (PMMS) for the university's road lanes and parking spaces. A thorough analysis of related past studies has been done on the PMMS projects in Iraq and other countries to gain a comprehensive understanding on this topic. A PAVER system software is adopted in the study in order to develop a complete and integrated database and the GIS-based map layers for the road pavement and other extended engineering features. While there are past studies discussing the Maintenance and Rehabilitation (M&R) system for road pavement networks, though the systemic approach and forecast method is still missing. Hence, this project is conducted to help in providing a structural M&R system for the pavement networks

Investigation of anti -nociceptive activity of Zingabeel (Zingiber officinale) on acetic acid induced writhing in rats

This study was carried out to test for antinociceptive effect of the methanolic extract of ginger using acetic acid induced writhing in rats and compared to morphine and diclofenac sodium as standard drugs. The methanolic extract of ginger, showed dose dependent responses whereas 50 and 100mg/kg produced 100%protection against writhing  induced  by  acetic acid (0.6 %  i.p.) .  This protection supersedes the effect of diclofenac sodium (25, 50 and 75 mg/kg). On the other hand morphine (2.5- 10 mg/kg), exhibited 100% protection against writhing induced by acetic acid. Therefore we can conclude and recommend that, ginger is a potential source of new and effective anti-nociceptive agent(s). Bioassay guided fractionation for the methanolic extract of ginger should be investigated for the determination of active ingredient(s), and to elucidate their mechanism of action.  الخلاصة: أجريت هذ الدراسة  لإختبار تأثيرالخلاصة الميثانولية  للزنجبيل كمسكن للألم باستخدام حمض الاستيك الذي يحفز الانقباضات ألبطنيه المسببة للألم ومقارنته بالمورفين و الدايكلوفيناك صوديوم  كأدوية مرجعية. أظهر  المستخلص الميثانولي للزنجبيل إستجابات إعتمادا على  الجرعات حيث إنه في الجرعات  50 و 100مجم/كجم نتجت حماية بنسبة 100% ضد الانقباضات المسببة  بواسطة حمض الأسيتيك (0,6%)˛ حيث يعتبر أفضل تأثيرا من الدايكلوفيناك صوديوم (25، 50، 75مجم/كجم) ومن ناحية أخرى فإن المورفين (2.5 -10 مجم/كج) قد أعطى حماية بنسبة 100% ضد الانقباضات المسببه بواسطة حمض الأسيتيك.  لذا نستنتج   ونوصي بأن الزنجبيل مصدر متوقع  جديد فعال كمسكن للآلام. كما نوصي  بأن تجرى الاختبارات الحيوية الموجهه للتجزئة للزنجبيل لتحديد المادة الفعالة و توضيح آلية عملها.    &nbsp

Investigation of gateway placement optimization approaches in wireless mesh networks using genetic algorithms

Recently wireless mesh networks (WMNs) gained significant roles in the current communication technologies and have been used in numerous applications such as transportation systems, rescue systems, Surveillance systems, community and neighborhood networking and etc. Therefore, many researchers pay their attention to the wireless mesh network issues especially the gateway placement optimization problems. In this paper, we study and investigate the efforts of many researchers that dealt with the gateway placement optimization problem based on combinatorial optimization concepts in comparison with other conventional algorithms as well as comparing the combinatorial based algorithms with each other. The investigation result shows that the genetic algorithms based approaches on solving gateway optimization problem relatively outperform many other approaches in addition to that the strength of the genetic algorithm depends on the fitness function which is used in measuring the quality of the individuals (fitness value)

LptO (PG0027) is required for lipid A 1-phosphatase activity in Porphyromonas gingivalis W50

ABSTRACT Porphyromonas gingivalis produces outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) rich in virulence factors, including cysteine proteases and A-LPS, one of the two lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) produced by this organism. Previous studies had suggested that A-LPS and PG0027, an outer membrane (OM) protein, may be involved in OMV formation. Their roles in this process were examined by using W50 parent and the Δ PG0027 mutant strains. Inactivation of PG0027 caused a reduction in the yield of OMVs. Lipid A from cells and OMVs of P. gingivalis W50 and the Δ PG0027 mutant strains were analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Lipid A from W50 cells contained bis-P-pentaacyl, mono-P-pentaacyl, mono-P-tetraacyl, non-P-pentaacyl, and non-P-tetraacyl species, whereas lipid A from Δ PG0027 mutant cells contained only phosphorylated species; nonphosphorylated species were absent. MALDI-TOF/TOF tandem MS of mono-P-pentaacyl ( m / z 1,688) and mono-P-tetraacyl ( m / z 1,448) lipid A from Δ PG0027 showed that both contained lipid A 1-phosphate, suggesting that the Δ PG0027 mutant strain lacked lipid A 1-phosphatase activity. The total phosphatase activities in the W50 and the Δ PG0027 mutant strains were similar, whereas the phosphatase activity in the periplasm of the Δ PG0027 mutant was lower than that in W50, supporting a role for PG0027 in lipid A dephosphorylation. W50 OMVs were enriched in A-LPS, and its lipid A did not contain nonphosphorylated species, whereas lipid A from the Δ PG0027 mutant (OMVs and cells) contained similar species. Thus, OMVs in P. gingivalis are apparently formed in regions of the OM enriched in A-LPS devoid of nonphosphorylated lipid A. Conversely, dephosphorylation of lipid A through a PG0027-dependent process is required for optimal formation of OMVs. Hence, the relative proportions of nonphosphorylated and phosphorylated lipid A appear to be crucial for OMV formation in this organism. IMPORTANCE Gram-negative bacteria produce outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) by “blebbing” of the outer membrane (OM). OMVs can be used offensively as delivery systems for virulence factors and defensively to aid in the colonization of a host and in the survival of the bacterium in hostile environments. Earlier studies using the oral anaerobe Porphyromonas gingivalis as a model organism to study the mechanism of OMV formation suggested that the OM protein PG0027 and one of the two lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) synthesized by this organism, namely, A-LPS, played important roles in OMV formation. We suggest a novel mechanism of OMV formation in P. gingivalis involving dephosphorylation of lipid A of A-LPS controlled/regulated by PG0027, which causes destabilization of the OM, resulting in blebbing and generation of OMVs. </jats:p

Intraoperative Organ Motion Models with an Ensemble of Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks

In this paper, we describe how a patient-specific, ultrasound-probe-induced prostate motion model can be directly generated from a single preoperative MR image. Our motion model allows for sampling from the conditional distribution of dense displacement fields, is encoded by a generative neural network conditioned on a medical image, and accepts random noise as additional input. The generative network is trained by a minimax optimisation with a second discriminative neural network, tasked to distinguish generated samples from training motion data. In this work, we propose that 1) jointly optimising a third conditioning neural network that pre-processes the input image, can effectively extract patient-specific features for conditioning; and 2) combining multiple generative models trained separately with heuristically pre-disjointed training data sets can adequately mitigate the problem of mode collapse. Trained with diagnostic T2-weighted MR images from 143 real patients and 73,216 3D dense displacement fields from finite element simulations of intraoperative prostate motion due to transrectal ultrasound probe pressure, the proposed models produced physically-plausible patient-specific motion of prostate glands. The ability to capture biomechanically simulated motion was evaluated using two errors representing generalisability and specificity of the model. The median values, calculated from a 10-fold cross-validation, were 2.8+/-0.3 mm and 1.7+/-0.1 mm, respectively. We conclude that the introduced approach demonstrates the feasibility of applying state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to generate organ motion models from patient images, and shows significant promise for future research.Comment: Accepted to MICCAI 201

Effect of compost and urea nitrogen on growth and yield of sweet pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) and on some properties of the Gezira soil

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Compost is stable humus like product resulting from biological decomposition of organic matter under controlled conditions. The objective of this study was to investigate the combined effect of compost with urea nitrogen on some soil properties, growth and yield of sweet pepper. This study comprised a number of experimentations conducted over two consecutive seasons (2009/10-2010/11) at the Experimental Farm of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Gezira and laboratories of CIRAD in France. Compost was applied at 0, 10 and 20 t ha-1 combined with N at 0, 43 and 86 kg ha-1 in the form of urea. The results showed that application of compost alone or in combination with urea nitrogen improved soil properties and hence growth and yield of sweet pepper. Improvement of those parameters was more pronounced when the urea and compost were combined, especially at the higher rates. Combination of urea and compost presumably improved availability of nitrogen from the organic source to sweet pepper and, therefore, positively affected growth and yield of the crop. The extent of improvement was less when urea nitrogen and organic manures were applied in the same season. Hence, it could be recommended to fertilize sweet pepper with compost and urea at the rate of 86 kg N/ ha